“Cause you've still got a shot at
valedictorian,” Tisha answered. “We
wouldn't want you caught in a riot and killed.
Or worse, arrested. Keep you out
of the good colleges.”

“What makes you think there'll be
riots?”

“Cause I'm fucking cynical. Not as cynical as Rachel, but I know how the
world works. Even though making them was
wrong, lots of people will still want the Defenders to stay American.”

“No, man, no one will want to
fight. They'll all be with Terstein;
they'll all be trying to help the EHUDs.
The ones who bother enough to go to the U.N., at least.”

Tisha shrugged. “Well, I'm
fine with you going. We can't exactly
stop you, either. What do you think,
Rach?”

There was no reply from deeper in
the alcove.

Tisha turned. “Rachel?”

Rachel sat flat in the snow, back
against the wall, staring out at the packed schoolyard. “A riot.”

“What?”

“A motherfucking riot. That's how we'll do it!” Rachel jumped up and grabbed the fringe of
Tisha's jacket. “We show how serious we
are, how we're not letting all this shit get us down, how we're not going to
take illegal imprisonment, how we're not going to let the government do all
this again. We stage a rally, right
here, right now, and we say, 'Let us go!'”

Tisha raised an eyebrow. “All three of us know that's a bad idea.”

“No!” Rachel let go and flashed puppy-dog eyes at
Raoul. “C'mon, it's just like when
Latterndale stood up to Merv! Us against
the school!”

“That was bigger, and someone had a
gun! Who has a gun here?” She looked to Raoul for support, then back to
Tisha. “C'mon, you always say you want
to make a difference. Going to the U.N.,
that's great, that helps the bigger picture.
But what about this small stuff?
Who takes care of this if not us?”

Silence stretched out for several
long moments before Raoul cleared his throat.
“I say we do it. What they're
doing here? It's wrong. Our parent's haven't done anything about it,
and the school board hasn't listened to us so far. No one defended the Defenders when their
rights were violated. Who'll defend
us? Fucking no one but ourselves.”

Rachel smiled and started to perform a victory
dance before Tisha stared her down.
Rachel cleared her throat and gestured to the yard beyond Raoul. “Okay, let's think this out.”

They peered around the edge of the
alcove. At the far edge of the
schoolyard was the main gate, guarded by the school's four full-time security
guards, six off-duty police volunteers, and a handful of teachers who looked
just as uncomfortable as the hundreds of students milling around in front of
the gate.

“Okay.” Rachel pulled back and retrieved her
mobile. “I'm going to organize a protest
online. Raoul, Tisha, you go and drum up
some people. Try to get the popular
bitches: Amanda, Sahara, maybe Jewel.
We'll meet in front of the gate in fifteen, okay?”

“Now it's just a protest?”

Rachel shrugged. “We'll start there and see what happens.”

“Have you thought about what
happens if they try to shut us down?”

Rachel shrugged again. “They can't catch all of us.”

“Shit.”

Fifteen minutes later the crowd of
students trapped in the yard began to contract, a solid nucleus coalescing in
front of the gate.

The off-duty officers noticed. One stepped forward, raised his hand and
waved to the students. “Hey, kids. Gonna need you to step back, please. Cars are still coming.”

The students didn't move. “Let us go, man!” Raoul called.

The officer shook his head. “Can't do that. Have to stay here until your parents pick you
up, or until your bus gets here.”

“This is illegal!” Tisha
yelled. “Detainment without just cause!”

Her words seemed to break something
in the crowd, and a chorus of “Yeah!” and “Nazis!” echoed off the school’s
bricks.

“This is what happened to the Defenders!”
Raoul yelled. “They held them, they
tortured them! What's keeping you from
torturing us?”

The officer, sensing that police
interference wouldn't help the situation, stepped back and gestured at one of
the teachers. The teacher stepped
forward and tried to diffuse the situation, but her words were drowned out by
the student's enraged chanting.

“It's the fucking weekend!”

“Let us go, you Nazis!”

“Illegal imprisonment, man!”

Rachel stood off to one side,
watching as her plan became a reality.
Beyond the gate, she saw a minivan pull up, and felt the thrill of
success as the guards noticed the van, then concluded that they couldn't let it
in. A parent had come for their child,
but as soon as the gate was opened the students would rush out, would overrun
guards and break rules.

So the minivan had to wait
outside. It honked, and somewhere in the
school yard a girl yelled, “C'mon, my mom's out there!”

And as the tension mounted, as the
guards and teachers and off-duty officers pulled closer together, as the
students pushed forward to create a greater presence, Rachel saw what was
needed to make this work. She crouched,
picked up a handful of snow, balled it, and let fly.

“The fuck?!” Tisha looked around, trying to see who had
hit her in the head with the ball of slush.

“They're throwing shit!” Rachel
yelled, waving her arms and gesturing at the guards.

That was it. A phalanx of students rushed forward, swinging
backpacks and skateboards, ready to let out a decade of pent-up rebellion.

For their part, the off-duty police
kept their heads. They fell back into
defensive postures, making sure they held nothing that could be construed as
weaponry; none of them wanted to be the next Shaun Wendleferce. It was the teachers who panicked and tried to
fight off their attackers.

More students pushed forward, there
was a scream as a canister of pepper-spray was emptied, and the riot began in
earnest. The police now had no choice
but to defend themselves.

The angry yells, the prospect of
easy victory and peer acclaim excited Rachel, and she found herself pulled
forward into the throng. She moved until
there was a gap around her, slung off her backpack, felt inside for anything to
throw into the melee.

Seconds—minutes—hours later, Rachel
heard sirens. She looked up from the
basketball coach, his face bloody as he succumbed to the savage beatings of
three teens, and saw sirens flashing behind a curtain of snow. Metal screeched as police cruisers crashed
through the gate.

The student's didn't run. They abandoned the teachers, the staff, the
guards, and swarmed over the newly arrived police. Rachel rode the wave, swept up in the ecstasy
of tension released. She saw blue
uniforms before her, heard amplified shouts—

Felt pressure in her back, felt a
blossom of pain across her face as she hit the concrete. Someone knelt on her back, wrenched her arms
behind her. A plastic loop was slipped
over her wrists, pulled tight, and then she was alone, lost at the bottom of a
sea of humanity, trying not to drown in the flood she had unleashed.

Rachel lay on the examining table,
cut off from the rest of the ward by a thin paper curtain. She ignored the screams and curses of the
busy emergency room. How had it all gone
so wrong? One minute, they were
rallying, about to make their break, the next they were dispersing, huddling
around the building as thirty-odd kids were being dragged off to lock-up.

On the upside, she wouldn't be
spending her whole weekend in jail. She
touched her nose and winced. Her fingers
came away bloody. On the downside, she
wouldn't be spending her weekend in New York, supporting the Latterndale Plan.

The curtain was ripped aside and
her father stormed into the imagined hospital room. He looked, in Rachel's considered opinion,
pissed. "What the hell happened out
there?" he demanded.

"You, uh, you got a little
blood..." Rachel pointed at his shirt.

"Gunshot wound, squirter. Forget it.
What the hell were you thinking, starting a riot?"

"Dad, I didn't--"

"Bullshit. Tisha told me."

"Oh."

Reggie sighed and leaned against
the table. "Sixteen kids in
hospital, Rachel. One critical. What were you thinking?"

She sat up, blood and mucus oozing
down her face. "Who?"

He shrugged. "I don't know. Heavyset kid."

"Raoulito..."

He shrugged again. "I don't know. Look, Rach, I'm... I'm proud that you stood
up for what you believed in. That's
admirable. But it was also stupid,
okay? But... but there's something else
I need to talk to you about." He
pulled a rolled-up sheaf of paper from his pocket. "The blood test Perry ran when you got
here."

Rachel slumped back on the table. "What?
Did I get hepatitis during the whole two hours I was in jail?"

"Too early to tell. The thing is... God. Rachel, you're pregnant."

She sat up again.

Reggie didn't look up from the
scuffed linoleum floor. "About two
months."

"No way..." September 12th loomed in her mind, the day
after Lemlin, the day after the world had changed forever. She was supposed to be at Tisha's,
studying. In reality she had been with
Wayne, staying up late into the night, discussing the future, coming to terms
with the fact that they might very well die in the coming days as the Defenders
took their righteous revenge. At the
height of fatalistic release, they had thrown consequence away and made love
like there was no tomorrow. But there
had been a tomorrow, and another, and another, and it looked like there would
be more tomorrows in the conceivable future.

"Obviously, considering that
your youthful instincts just started a riot, I doubt you're mature enough for a
child at this point, and would recommend you terminate the pregnancy--the
sooner the better." He turned to
look at her, then rested his hand atop hers.
"I would recommend speaking with your mother first, let her have
her say."

She didn't hear him. The ring of green paper hanging from the
curtain track above her seemed to stretch into infinity. It felt as if she were falling, as if the new
life inside her might burst out of her stomach, then proceed to devour her old
life.

She felt incredibly young,
incredibly stupid. What was she
thinking, starting a riot? Edgar had
been bold, had stood up to the nation and declared what was right. That was all she really wanted... She just wanted to do right...

Reggie sighed. "Yeah, I can tell you're not
listening. Okay, so I'm going to patch
up your nose, get a couple x-rays of your back, then John's going to pick you
up."

Tisha was right, Tisha was always
right...

Reggie pulled on a pair of rubber
gloves and began to feel his daughter's nose.
"Good, doesn't feel broken...
Damn it, I'm too old to be a grandfather."